


Mellow

by annalore



Category: National Football League RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 04:11:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16055297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annalore/pseuds/annalore
Summary: You’re supposed to mellow when you age.





	Mellow

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a while ago -- after the 2013 season Super Bowl, I think? -- and never posted it. But I'm going through all my old fic and posting, so I figured I'd add this also.

You’re supposed to mellow when you age.

And maybe that’s why games are won by the young – because they have something to prove.  They’re at war with the world, because they haven’t discovered the depth and breadth of it yet.  The reality that there’s a time and a place for everyone and everything.

Maybe that’s why he understands – when Peyton shows up at his door without a word.  When they sit down to dinner together like that was the plan all along.  When he holds Peyton in his arms, warm and comfortable in his flannel pajama pants and raggedy old tee.

Peyton looks at the ceiling, through the ceiling.  _I’m gonna miss it when it’s gone_ , he says.

In Peyton’s soft, nostalgic tone, he can almost see the sunny, summer fields where he played as a kid.  When it was just a game and it was just for fun, and it was meant to last forever.  And he can sense that they’re both closer to the end than the beginning.  They’re in the closing stretch.

He blinks tears into Peyton’s shoulder and questions why he’s the one who’s hurting.  He’s spent a season thinking only about winning.  He fought so hard, as if he could will it into reality.  He wanted his name among the greats; at the very top of that list.  He’s felt greedy and needy and desperate, and now he’s ashamed.

 _This isn’t the end for you_ , he whispers to Peyton.

Peyton turns into him, kisses him.  It’s soft and warm and familiar, and his eyes are full of love and sorrow.  He hears what Peyton doesn’t have the heart to say – that it ends for everyone, that they’re lucky to have come so far.  But if he accounts for luck, it’s always in times like this, when he feels like he has everything he wants and needs.

What haunts him isn’t losing, so much as losing the chance to win.  Standing on a field in winter, knowing that come summer, it will all be gone.  Time moving too fast, like the clicking of a film projector, showing the highlights of his life.

You’re supposed to mellow.  You’re supposed to be ready when it’s over.  Ready for other things, things that would have been distractions before.  Throwing a ball around with Peyton’s twins, sleeping in on Sundays.  Walking the dogs in the park.  And he wants that, feels the pull of it.  Feels acceptance growing in what once would have been only defeat.

But he isn’t ready yet.  He isn’t ready for it to end.


End file.
